The Short + Sweet Dance Festival Gala Final audience was already somewhat over-excited before the start of the show at 7pm on Sunday night. They had been following performances for two weeks, appeared to personally know most of the performers, were excited to see their favourites in the Final, and seemed to have almost as much investment in the dancers on stage doing really well as those dancers did themselves. By the end of the show, two hours later, when it was time for the awards to be announced, the audience was so loud and quick in its excited applause and whistles and cheers, that it was often difficult to hear who had been awarded exactly what awards –  the list below may need to be amended.

All the performers, of course,  rose to the occasion and danced with confidence and conviction.

Perhaps most notable were three intense and fully committed self-choreographed solos. Two works seemed to have come from the same initial provocation, though they were in the end quite different in nature.  In Expressivo, Melana Khabazi became the sound, soul, energy, spirit, strings, bow and body of a gypsy violin playing music by Lyoko, and quickly filled the space with whirls and swirls and darts and dashes and rolls and spins. In Body Party, Ula Naulutubutubu-Buliruarua became one with her music too, embodying the swirling energy and rococo rhythms of Vivaldi’s Oboe Concerto in C with the addition of twerking and trembling and what appeared to be deconstructive elements tossed in for good measure.  On a different rack altogether, in Elegant Error, co-choreographed with Cat Ruka, Duncan Armstrong revealed some of the psychological and physical costs of striving for impeccable balletic line, and the ways such extreme commitments can deform the body’s musculature.

No surprise at all that the judging panel awarded those  three Performance Awards – IndependANCE Best Male Performer for Armstrong, IndependANCE Best Female Performer for Naulutubutubu-Buliruarua, and the Tempo 2014 (invitation to perform in a showcase) Award for Khabazi. Elegant Error also won the Judges Choice Award for overall excellence, and Naulutubutubu-Buliruarua was acknowledged as Best Backstage Helper.

Amongst  the group works, Sophie Follet’s stripped to the bone, soberly presented Kei Wareware Tatou (Lest we Forget) was an elegant, quietly absorbed, flowing  quintet exploring the battlefield experiences of the Maori Batallion. It won the People’s Choice Award, honoring both performance and choreography. The group choreography award went to Amelia Grey’s very tightly bound trio There Was a Time, set to the ever repeating rhythms of music by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

Three other group works also won awards. Two allegorical works  – The Crocodile and the Monkey, an Indian dance drama presented by Prayas Youth Theatre, and Wing$, a hiphop inflected questioning of the impact of the Nike Swoosh, danced by Wasabi Dance Crew, received  Spirit of the Festival Appreciation Awards, and Shani Dickens, choreographer of Demi God Half Human, from which an extract was presented, received the Emerging Artist Award.

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